


A Thousand Lifetimes

by DarylDixonGrimes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Aaron approves, M/M, Past Lives, Soulmates, brief sexytimes, but not very explicit sexytimes, hand holding, idk - Freeform, maybe it's maybelline, maybe it's something else, maybe witchcraft, occasionally rick and daryl are other genders, rick and daryl are lesbians for a second, this is hard to tag, which is a tag that will make sense in the context of the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 09:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12791514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarylDixonGrimes/pseuds/DarylDixonGrimes
Summary: The strange old woman makes Rick feel less wary than he knows he should. She talks cryptically about answers to questions he doesn't know he has, about tea and journeys. His curiosity brimming, Rick lets her guide him (and Daryl) through the infinite seas of time, through all the moments that help them remember exactly who and what they are.





	A Thousand Lifetimes

The old woman showed up two years after the war ended, to the day. That’s what she said anyway, when she gently tapped on the gates and asked to be let in. 

“I thought two years of peace was long enough,” she said. It had been strange even by the standards of a world like theirs. Even stranger still when she’d addressed Rick directly as he sidled up to see what was going on. “The yellow one at the end of the far street would have what I need, Mr. Grimes.”

And the whole situation should have made his skin crawl. Her knowing that many details about them and their lives should have been a million and one red flags. Enough for him to put his Colt to her head and start asking questions even if she had a halo of wild gray hair and wore a flowy floral skirt that reached nearly all the way to the grass at her feet.

But she looked like someone’s eccentric grandmother with the large crystal hanging around her neck and the literal carpet bag at her side, overflowing with dried flowers and herbs. She barely even had a weapon, a small silver knife tucked into her leather belt. It almost looked more ceremonial than practical. As he took in the look of her, she aimed a kind smile in his direction, and something about her put him completely at ease, like she was exactly where she was meant to be and wouldn’t harm them.

“Long enough for what?” someone asked, and Rick wondered what she’d said before he approached.

“For answers.” She gave Rick another smile when she said it, one that seemed to suggest he was the one with the question. His brows knit together and he couldn’t remember the last time he had so many moments of confusion in such a short span of time. Never, maybe.

Without waiting for him to declare her welcome, she set off down the street, her skirt whipping around her ankles to reveal bare feet. Bare damn feet in a world that was all sharp edges and scattered bones. She walked with purpose, and it was clear the small(er) yellow house was her intended destination. With every step, it seemed she’d already walked there a thousand times before.

They were halfway up the street before Rick remembered the house wasn’t empty.

“I know,” she said, before he could even open his mouth. And he’d seen a lot of shit in the past half-decade or so, but he found a response to something he'd never said unsettling even if he didn’t feel like she was an immediate danger.

“What’d you mean by answers?” Rick asked. “What exactly is the question?”

The two of them made their way up the sidewalk leading to the front porch of Daryl’s home, and safe or not, Rick must have been put off by the woman and the overall air of strangeness surrounding her, because it didn’t occur to him until that exact moment that Daryl was gonna be pissed. New people made him nervous in general, and for good reason, but a new person just deciding to walk right up to his front door out of the blue spouting convoluted riddles? 

“Life only has one real question, Rick Grimes,” she said, turning to him before she walked up the two stares leading to the front porch. “Every other question is just an iteration.”

“What the hell is that s-”

“It means nothing you need to know stays hidden for long,” she said, cutting him off. The knowing half-smile Rick now thought was probably a near-permanent fixture grew broader, and the light in her eyes warmed him like the springtime sun filtering through a window.

He sighed and followed her up to the front door where she knocked precisely three times.

Daryl answered with surly confusion, his body already swaying back and forth, ready to fall into a nervous pace at any given moment. Whatever it was about the gray-haired woman that made Rick feel mostly okay, it wasn’t strong enough to push past Daryl’s internal walls, thick and made of concrete and steel.

As he watched his friend sway behind the screen door, Rick was glad he'd followed her, because it was clear he was the only thing tethering Daryl to some kind of civility. Without him, who knew how he would have reacted? Then again, had she expected him to follow all long?

“I did,” she said, and Rick felt goosebumps trickle up his arms. He wondered if she could hear literally every thought he had. And then he wondered how far that extended. Was it just words? Were there flashes and images of the horrors that never left him and the fantasies he couldn’t shake?

If she could hear that train, she didn’t announce its arrival or departure. Instead, she focused her energy back on Daryl.

“Mr. Dixon, I believe it’s time for tea.”

The look he shot Rick only had one possible translation: what the ever-living fuck? And Rick shrugged in response, because he was just as lost. But curiosity was starting to win over everything else he felt, and while she seemed convinced there was only one question, Rick now had several.

“Time may be illusory, but still, hasn't enough been wasted?" she asked. And Rick felt an overwhelming need to agree with her even as Daryl snorted.

“Just let us in,” Rick said, because being inside meant he might figure out who this woman was, what she knew, and how the hell she’d survived so long in their world with nothing but bare feet and some dried dandelions.

Looking at Rick like he’d lost his goddamn mind, Daryl shrugged and opened the door, chewing on his thumb as they walked past him. Rick didn’t look at him. He didn’t want to invite Daryl to open a floodgate of questions that might stall the woman currently walking into the living room, pushing furniture to the side as she went.

“Please move the couch under the window.”

“Like it where it is,” Daryl said.

“And so it shall be again when we’re done.”

He threw Rick a look again, one he saw in his periphery. Instead of indulging it, Rick stepped forward and began to move the couch, sliding it against the wall under the large front window. When they were done, every piece of furniture had been moved to the edge of the room, leaving the floor wide and open.

Rick instantly thought of the time his parents had gotten new carpet. It was Rick’s fault they’d had to do it. He’d brought home the little bent-tailed dog, had no clue how to train it, and it had pissed everywhere before he finally figured it out. His parents had been indulgent, had told him they’d always hated the deep brown shag, and maybe they had, but he’d known the whole thing was more about the fact that they loved him.

They’d ordered the plush tan the second Scooter had officially gone two weeks without an accident. The day it was installed, the whole family including his brother and the little pup had spent a good half hour rolling around in the empty room before they’d started to move the furniture back in.

A growled, “listen, lady,” brought him back to the present, where the strange old woman was spreading petals around the room, using them as a paintbrush to create a large circle made of deep purple, red and white.

“Don’t fret over the impermanent,” was all she said as she finished her circle. Rick felt Daryl give him yet another look.

“Red for passion, violet for wisdom, and white to protect you on your journey.”

“Journey to where?” Daryl asked. “The hell are you on?”

She smiled indulgently but otherwise didn’t answer.

“I’ll make tea now,” she said simply, leaving them both alone in the living room.

“Rick, what the hell is going on?” Daryl asked, and Rick was unable to prevent him from rounding on him with questions he didn’t have answers for now that the old woman had left them alone together.

“I don’t exactly know,” Rick said. “She just showed up.”

“And you let her in and brought her here?” Daryl asked, clearly annoyed. New people were supposed to bother folks like Aaron or Father Gabriel, people who actually knew what hospitality at least sort of meant and enjoyed doling it out. They were maybe supposed to bother Rick if someone felt they’d do well with meeting the leader or had a bad feeling.   
  
“She brought herself here,” Rick said. “This is where she wanted to be.”

“That didn’t seem off to you?” Daryl asked, glancing toward the kitchen. Whatever she was doing, she was doing it silently.

“The whole thing seems off to me,” Rick said. “I think...I think she knows what I’m thinkin?”

“Then let’s tell her to hit the road,” Daryl said. “Got enough on your plate with the trade routes and Judith having her ‘no’ phase.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” Rick said, the words feeling unerringly true as they left his mouth. For better or for worse, he was invested in whatever the hell this was. Whether it was curiosity or something deep down in him begging him to answer whatever burning question the woman thought he had, he didn’t know. But he had to see it through.

“The hell is with you?” Daryl asked.

“Aren’t you curious?” Rick responded, at once wondering how she was making tea when he hadn’t even heard the sink turn on. And he couldn’t explain why that didn’t bother him like it should, that she was somehow making tea without making tea.

“Curious about what?” Daryl walked over to the circle of flower petals and stared down at it, like he was trying to decipher some hidden message tucked away within the perfect ring. “Why she’s growin flowers instead of food or where she found a damn botanical garden in all this?”

“They’re actually edible,” she said quietly, two steaming mugs in her hands. Another red flag that should've made Rick wary to his very core. She was asking them to drink something she wouldn’t be drinking herself.

“Rick,” she said, holding a mug out to him. He took it and sniffed the contents as she informed him not to drink it yet.

“He ain’t drinkin it ever,” Daryl said. “How do we know it’s safe when you ain’t even havin any?”

“Why would the sky want to harm the stars?” she asked, and Daryl scoffed.

Realizing they were getting nowhere, Rick took the second mug from her and placed it in Daryl’s hands. He didn’t know why.

Beside him, Daryl grumbled, “I don’t even like tea.”

“Please sit,” she said, pointing inside the circle.

“How?” Rick asked, sensing there was a process here, a set of instructions he wasn’t allowed to read but nonetheless had to follow.

“Sit like you would sit,” she said. Cautiously, Rick stepped one foot over the circle of petals. Daryl followed because Daryl always followed. Holding the tea cup steady, he slipped down and sat on the hardwood, drawing his feet around him like a pretzel until he felt as comfortable as an old man could sitting on a hard floor.

Next to him, Daryl huffed in annoyance and sat too, drawing his knees up and throwing his free arm around them to hold them in place. Always protecting himself, even when Rick was right there and would never let anything or anyone hurt him. Provided the strange woman really wasn’t trying to poison them anyway.

“Daryl,” she said softly, finally seeking to comfort him somehow. “The journey may seem strange, but the destination holds the truth you need most.”

“Cut the hippie bullshit and let’s get this over with so Rick stops acting like a lunatic.”

“Daryl,” she said again, sounding a little sad this time. “A lion’s heart too kind for the lives it has endured.”

Daryl snorted quietly even as Rick felt he had never heard truer words in all the years he’d walked the Earth.

“Reality is nothing but belief,” she said. “If not in me, then in him. Do you?”

“Do I what?” Daryl asked, staring into his cup of honey-colored tea. It had stopped steaming, and Rick had never been much for tea, but he knew that lack of steam meant it was almost the perfect temperature to drink. That too, felt intentional. 

“Do you believe in Rick Grimes?”

Daryl hesitated. She’d finally hit on something he couldn’t disagree with, no matter how much he wanted to bristle and shy away from whatever it was she was trying to do.

“Always,” he said. 

“Please stir each others’ tea,” she said. “Three times, counter-clockwise as we’re going backwards to go forwards.”

“Stir it with what?” Daryl asked, but Rick knew the answer, reaching over to dip his finger into Daryl’s cup. The tea was hot but not scalding, the heat of it oddly comforting, like a hot bath after a long day. Around his finger twirled, one, two, three times, the tea parting around it and swirling around the cup. Following Rick’s lead, Daryl did the same to his. Rick didn’t even flinch at the dirt under his fingernails.

“Drink until it’s empty,” she said, “You might want to lie down when you’re finished.”

Rick downed the contents of the cup which tasted of earth and honesuckle, and the more logical side of his brain told him this was all a big mistake and that even if it wasn’t a mistake, it was a huge waste of time. But some deeper, more primal side felt like it was not only the right thing for him to do, it was wholly necessary. It felt like his life would be missing something profound if he didn’t.

“If this really does turn out to be poison,” Daryl grumbled low, intending the words for Rick’s ears only, though Rick knew the old woman had heard it. He doubted there was much she didn’t hear. Despite the comment, Daryl tipped his cup as well, knocking back the contents like they were nothing but a shot of whiskey.

Together, they laid on their backs in the circle. And Rick thought he heard the old woman whispering words that had no meaning but meant everything. But he also thought he heard nothing at all. As his eyes began to droop, the rational side of him chimed alarm bells, but he barely heard them. Before he lost consciousness, he thought he felt Daryl grab his hand, perhaps his own form of alarm, but he was already sinking, time passing around them in an endless, infinite loop of lifetimes.

Rick saw them. In his soul and his bones, he knew it was them, even though they looked nothing like the two men in the yellow house in Alexandria. Tufts of fur hid their nakedness but not much else as they watched an animal roast on the nearby fire, their thighs touching where they sat in the dirt. There were no buildings or lights and the stars were a blanket above them, milky and awe-inspiring in their vastness and multitude.

Rick could feel it, the overwhelming sense of belonging and togetherness, even before they started to rut together in the dirt. Two became one in a storm of clashing lips and tangled limbs. The fire was so so warm.

He traveled through time again, the passage of it feeling so insignificant because in the whole of everything, it was nothing but an illusion, something to tether the souls traveling through it. It was a medium and nothing more, a medium that he knew wouldn’t matter at all when they finally reached their destination.

This time, they were soldiers in leather armor. His other half had a scar, one that ran from his hairline to his chin like jagged lightening. They died in battle together, both groping for each other across blood-dampened grass.

Time was nothing and everything again. And then a stone bedchamber holding a chill the fire couldn’t seem to touch. A maid placed a warmer between the blankets, but, no, she was more than that. She had always been more than that. The longing within himself, only he wasn’t a he in this life, was overpowering. He wanted to ask her to stay. It was so cold, and he wanted nothing more than to be warm together.

Together. He felt it again. They were fated, and it didn’t take lingering hands helping him out of layers of clothing for him to know. It didn’t take him kissing the angry whelps on her back that he swore again and again to put a stop to someday. The threads binding them were deep and unbreakable, and he knew that long before they started sighing into each others’ mouths, hands rubbing and slipping under nightgowns and roughly sewn skirts, tongues lapping at soft pink folds, tears falling at what could never fully be, not in that lifetime, but in so many more.

It was so much more than love.

In so many of their lives, they were fighters. Sometimes, he sensed they were on the wrong side of the battle. Other times, he could feel it, something much deeper than simple human morality choosing their side. Sometimes they died together, sometimes one lost the other, sometimes they made it home to live out the rest of their days side-by-side.

Lifetime after lifetime, he saw their bond play out a thousand different ways. It was painfully sad to see how often they were ill-fated, meant to be but burdened by circumstances that ranged from differences in social status or race, to both of them being the same gender in times and places where that could never mean more than clandestine affairs. Many many times, their love got one or both of them killed despite every effort they made to protect each other. 

But the lifetimes where it worked made up for all the ones where it didn’t. There was more than one where they were married. Sometimes they were content to spend the years with only each other. Other times, one gave the other beautiful children they raised as one. He saw Carl and Judith in some of their faces, knew they’d come back to him too in the lifetime he was currently living just as Daryl had. The other children, he might not have known in his current life. But he would again.

Everything was a circle and they were infinite.

They were under the stars again, hands clasped tightly between them. Around them, a crisp autumn chill crept in with every minute that ticked past sunset. But neither of them cared, the warmth of their bond far stronger than something as frivolous as weather. In his pocket, a ring sat heavy, and Rick produced it at some point, turning to the soul next to him and asking the question he’d been mulling over for weeks, centuries, millennia.

Daryl said yes and they made love in the grass, returning home with smiles and clothes stained green by passion. It was one of the good lives, one where the years stretched on and they died old and gray in each others' arms. 

When Rick returned to his current life in the yellow house, his eyes were wet and the woman was gone, the only evidence she’d ever been there in the circle of petals surrounding them both. It felt surreal to be there in that place. After all, he’d just relived thousands and thousands of years in the few minutes he and Daryl had been unconscious.

Daryl.

When he turned his head, he found him sobbing, curled in on himself save the single hand still gripping Rick’s between them.

“Daryl,” Rick said softly, a hundred other names on the tip of his tongue.

“I knew I...” Daryl shook his head, unable to stop the flood of emotions long enough to get the words out. Rick let them flood out, patiently waiting until Daryl calmed. They had all the time they could ever need.

“I knew I loved you,” he said quietly, every word quivering. “But I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

“You were doing better than I was this time,” Rick said, staring at his eyes. In them, he could see the man, woman, person he’d loved since the first time their soul was created. “Because I had no fucking idea.”

Daryl laughed at that, the sound choked by the remnants of his tears, but happy just the same. 

“Had a lot of other shit to worry about,” Daryl said. “You always do.”

And it was true. Rick seemed to almost consistently lead lives that burdened him one way or another, even the blissfully happy ones. And Daryl seemed to always be at his side, balancing him and helping him when he couldn’t handle it anymore.

The fresh memory of all the times he’d touched him before had Rick reaching out to touch him then, savoring it as he ran his fingertips from Daryl’s temple to his scruff. And now that he knew everything, he could feel every link between them, invisible tendrils that became more and more entangled with every iteration of their being.

Togetherness. Belonging.

“I love you,” Rick said, because of course it was true. Of course it had been true since they met and for centuries before and after that. “I love you,” he said again, knowing full well the words weren’t enough and could never be enough to describe what they were. He had loved Lori too, had even seen her presence in other lifetimes, but she wasn’t a part of him. He and Daryl weren’t complete without each other. They weren’t two souls but one, divided and set adrift on the seas of time, drawn to one another again and again.

“I know,” Daryl said, and then they were kissing, lips slotting together perfectly by design. Something inside Rick swelled, crested and broke, splashing down on the sandy shore within him. Again and again, waves of affection poured through him and into the man beside him, and he found himself on top of Daryl, the two of them undulating, moaning and whimpering into each other’s kisses.

They made love there within the circle of petals, Daryl opening up and drinking Rick into his willing heat again and again as their hands clasped desperately at one another’s flesh, neither sure how much time they’d have together in this life, neither knowing if the next one or the next one would allow them even this.

When they finally emerged from the yellow house, they emerged together, hand-in-hand without any fanfare. They set out on their way up the street, Daryl intent on going with Rick to check on the gardens. Along the way, they passed Aaron with baby Gracie on his hip. He smiled fondly at the sight of their fingers intertwined, but otherwise said nothing, picking up the toddler's hand and helping her wave at them as they passed.

They reached the garden before anyone brought up the old woman. Her absence hadn’t bothered either of them enough to even mention it. In their minds, she’d done the thing she came to do. Whether she was a witch or a guide or something else, it didn’t matter. She’d been there to show them something they needed to see. Beyond that, the universe knew what it was doing.

“Where’d the old woman go?” Omar asked. Rick remembered seeing him at the gate.

“She left.”

“And the answers?” he asked. Clearly Rick hadn’t been the only person curious about what that meant. He understood now though.

The question was more complicated, and he imagined there was a reason he wasn’t allowed to fully know it. Someday he would, when he and Daryl had learned all the lessons their soul needed to learn, when they moved on to whatever was next.

For the time being, he imagined it was something to do with fate or love or the complete interconnectedness of everything. Still, as curious as he’d been when she’d said the words earlier, he found he no longer cared to know, not yet anyway.

He looked over at Daryl, who had finally given up his hand to pull a few weeds out of the berry patch. In the sun, the taut arms that had held him a million times glistened. He looked up at Rick, sapphire eyes so full of everything they had ever felt for one another that they were nearly bursting. Rick smiled. 

What did the question matter when he had all the answers he'd ever need?

**Author's Note:**

> I care about nothing but comments and the tiny, underdeveloped mews of baby kittens. 
> 
> Feel free to bug me on tumblr at DarylDixonGrimes.


End file.
